THE
SPECTATOR
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SIR IAN, OUR CONTEMPORARY
Shakespeare is in the news again. If only people read him as much as they read about him.
This week a German scholar has him as a cancer sufferer, and Sir Ian McKellen has him as an anti-fascist. An anti-fascist is a modish thing to be. A cancer sufferer is not. But Aids was not available in Eliza- bethan England. Still, the Times reports that the German scholar, Professor Hilde- gard Hammerschmidt-Hummel, of Mainz University, has investigated an alleged Shakespeare death-mask bought in London in 1775 by a German named Count Franz von Kesselstatt. Computers have helped her decide that the mask contains evidence that cancer might have been the cause of Shake- speare's death.
One of the difficulties for'English readers trying to take this investigation seriously is that Professor Hildegard Hammerschmidt- Hummel, of Mainz, sounds like the sort of German name made up by xenophobic English satirists who assume that any Ger- man double-barrelled academic name is automatically funny. We must admit that, on first seeing the professor referred to in print, a smile flickered across even our own normally lugubrious features. But Juliet warned us against nameism, and we must await without prejudice the result of Profes- sor Hammerschmidt-Hummel's researches into the von Kesselstatt death-mask.
One of the articles in advance of Sir Ian's film of Richard III explains that, 'like the 1990 Richard Eyre production at the Royal National Theatre on which it is based', the adaptation imagines 'a 1930s' England in which Mosleyite fascists have seized control of the country, with Richard as the intend- ed figurehead of a Nazi state'.
We must assume that the film is indeed anti-fascist. It is hard to see Sir Ian associ- ated with the opposite. But, in other hands, the opposite would be equally plausible, or implausible. Coriolanus was especially pop- ular in the 1930s with those who approved of what they took to be its anti-democratic meaning. Coriolanus is contemptuous of the people's votes. But both views of Shakespeare derive from what might well be one of the artistic fallacies of the centu- ry: the idea that Shakespeare is our con- temporary. Jan Kott's Shakespeare: Our Contempo- rary is proving to be the most influential book on Shakespeare of the last 50 years or so. Its message is that Shakespeare explains, or illuminates, modern politics, as well as the politics of his own time. He can help us better understand totalitarianism, Nazism, fascism. Kott himself was Central Euro- pean. The form of totalitarianism he had in mind was probably the more pressing one of communism. But an anti-communist Shakespeare was not much use to the aver- age Western Shakespeare director, since the Western bourgeoisie were anti-commu- nist too, and theatre is no fun if you can't make out that the bourgeoisie, to protect their comforts, are always about to embrace fascism. So Sir Ian's Richard is a fascist. Richard III tells us nothing about fascism. It may tell us something about individual fascists, but Shakespeare tells us something about individual everybody. Richard III is about power won through dynasties. In order to win power, Richard becomes the head of a dynasty. He does so by court intrigue and murder. The fascists — and the communists — won power by the oppo- site: by 'mobilising' the masses, or pretend- ing to, by means of a mass party. The dynastic route to power excluded the mass- es. There were battles. But they were small stuff compared with the wars which Shake- speare would have known about if he were really our contemporary; compared with the sort of fighting apparently depicted in Sir Ian's film. Once in office, fascists increased the power and role of govern- ment. Richard III just wanted to be on the throne. His government would have impinged less on the lives of his subjects than today's Inland Revenue, let alone a fascist state. Totalitarianism, of which fas- cism was an early version, though not an enduring one, was an entirely modern invention; the only political system invent- ed by the 20th century.
Does any of this matter? It's only a film. It matters if such use of Shakespeare helps give prestige to the idea that Britain was, or is, in danger of going fascist (in the 1930s, Mosley's party never saved a parliamentary deposit). And it matters if 'charismatic' fas- cist leaders are thought to be much of a danger today. In reality, the most successful totalitarian leader of the century was a rather uncharismatic bureaucrat who avoid- ed stirring speeches to the masses (Stalin). And today's most worrying totalitarian power is ruled by silent dotards (China). We should all enjoy Sir Ian in the film. We should be grateful to him, and Kenneth Branagh, for restoring Shakespeare to the cinema. But, as his tremendous portrayal of Richard unfolds, we must keep on remind- ing ourselves that Sir Ian is a great actor, not a great political philosopher. In Britain, however, actors have always been more admired than political philosophers, which is one of the reasons why our freedoms are not, and never were, in much danger from fascists.
Frank Johnson
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